


A Lullaby Sung in Nein Part Harmony

by ScrollingKingfisher



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Sharing a Bed, Tags will update!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22053850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScrollingKingfisher/pseuds/ScrollingKingfisher
Summary: It's a little bit about sharing warmth. A little about keeping the group all in one place. A little about trust. And a little bit about how they're all lonely, in their own way.But mostly it's about finding family.
Relationships: Beauregard & Caduceus Clay & Fjord & Jester Lavorre & Nott & Caleb Widogast & Yasha
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52





	1. One, two

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheRiverScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRiverScribe/gifts).



> Welp, new decade, new fandom!! Hi everyone, Critical Roll has claimed another victim and it's me! No regrets ;)  
> I'm currently around episode 57 but I'm rocketing through them at the speed of light in a headlong rush to catch up to current, and I'm loving every second. So apologies for any details that get jossed by my lack of knowledge! I'll be updating the tags and rating as we go.
> 
> Dedicating my first CR fic to River, thank you for dragging me with you into this with you!! And also thank you for the many, _many _hours you've spent listening with me so you can hear me scream at all the most emotional scenes XD You're the best <3 <3__

The first time it’s a mistake. 

The smelly wizard might have helped free her from that dank cell, Nott thinks to herself as they smuggle themselves out of town, but that doesn’t mean she trusts him. If anything, it might be reason to trust him less- one glance and she can see that he’s a man with secrets. The way that he’d tricked the guards had demonstrated a calculated cunning. People aren’t just kind for no reason, she’s learnt that through bitter experience.

But for now, they’re both filthy and starving and skirting the law, and despite her wariness, it’s easier to survive as two than as one. The open road is no place to be alone. She’ll ditch him as soon as they’re back in civilisation.

She keeps telling herself that as they reach the next settlement. And then the next. She doesn’t ditch him.

Caleb doesn’t talk much, but he shows her that he can light a campfire with a gesture, and distracts a crownsguard with his cat as she steals fruit and bread and the shiny buttons from people’s clothes. She snaps at him at first, but before she knows it she’s teaching him how to pull off a racket and the places where people are most likely to keep their wallets. Caleb doesn’t say anything, but his blue eyes are fixed on her attentively as she explains, and she can almost hear the thoughts clicking sharp behind them. 

And slowly, very very slowly, she feels her prickly shell wearing down. She watches as his eyes light up over a bookstore, then smiles behind her mask at his expression of thinly veiled excitement as she offers to help him steal one. He offers to teach her magic, and celebrates with her when their efforts bring success. Nott learns how to coax him back when he goes all vacant, to wake him whenever he starts shaking and begging in Zemnian in his sleep. They start inventing their own tricks made for two instead of one. Operation Honeypot brings in enough silver to keep them clothed and mostly sleeping in inns instead of on the streets. 

But it never takes too long for the local crownsguard to figure out why everyone’s pockets are a little lighter, and this time, they needed to leave town in a hurry. 

They run. The sound of angry shouting slowly fades as they leave the buildings in their wake. It’s raining, heavy droplets drenching their hair, soaking through their outer garments and dripping cold down the backs of their necks as they flee past the last houses of the small town. 

After the first couple of miles Caleb slows, staggering to a stop, bracing his hands on his knees to pant. 

“That was a close one. That was… hah… not good.”

Nott grimaces, glancing back the way they’d come. She knows that it was her fault. If she hadn’t tried to steal that bastard Crownsguard’s booze from right under his nose they wouldn’t be in this mess. Always her and her itchy fingers. 

But it’s getting dark, and she’s fairly sure they won’t send the dogs and horses out after some petty thieves on a night like this. She can feel the water dripping off the tips of her ears. She flicks them irritably.

“Come on. I don’t think they followed us. Let’s set up camp.”

They don’t dare light a fire. Instead, they huddle beneath the partial cover of some shrubby trees to keep off the worst of the rain. The darkness closes in and they both eat a meagre meal, chewing on the hunks of stale bread Nott finds in her pockets, before Caleb offers to take the first watch, despite the fact that his voice is audibly thick with exhaustion. She looks up at his face, damp and miserable, like a little kid who got caught out in the rain. He really does need someone to look after him sometimes. She pats his arm.

“No, no, you get some sleep. I’ll go first. I’m not even tired!” she tells him, as confidently as she can.  Caleb squints at her in the gloom. For a second she thinks that he sees past the ruse. But then he nods and bundles himself in his coat like a blanket before lying down. His eyes close and his breath deepens slowly as he slips into exhausted sleep. Frumpkin curls up around his neck, just as wet and miserable as his master.

Nott sighs, sitting next to his curled legs, and prepares herself for a damp, cold, boring night. She can feel the drops of water plink- plink- plinking off the tips of her ears. If only they were still in an inn, she could make some acid while she kept watch...

For all her big words, she starts to feel her own eyelids drooping. The adrenaline is wearing off. It’s been a long and stressful day for both of them. But that’s fine, she’s just a little tired, she can stay awake for a few more...

Her head bobs violently as she jerks upright again. With a vigorous shake of her head, she forces her back straight, scowling out at the darkness. She needs to stay awake! She needs to keep watch! 

Her eyelids are so heavy, but she can’t… 

she can’t...

  
  
  
  


Nott wakes to birdsong.

She stirs, blinks, not quite awake yet. There’s dampness across her back, but inside she’s dry- the rain must have stopped. 

Her eyelids open lazily, focusing on the droplets clinging to the blades of grass, glimmering in the dawn light. The slightly uncomfortable thing she’s lying on shifts under her face and she clumsily rearranges it a little so that her head is pillowed better. Whatever it is, it’s knobbly, bony even, but it’s warm. She wrinkles her nose. It smells like Caleb’s coat.

Wait.

Her eyes fly open. Caleb, that  _ is  _ Caleb, she fell asleep when she was meant to be keeping watch and keeping them safe and  _ now she’s lying on him! _ Shit! 

She jerks upright. Her head whips around. With a little luck he won’t have woken up-

Bemused blue eyes blink back at her from where they’d been watching her use his hip as a pillow. 

Busted. 

“Caleb… I’m so sorry, I was meant to be keeping watch…”

But he doesn’t look annoyed. If anything, there’s a look in his eyes she might call fond, if she had any more experience seeing it on his face. A hint of warmth on his usually scowling features.

“Don’t worry, Nott. It’s not a problem. Nothing happened, and we both needed the sleep,  _ ya? _ ” She nods sheepishly. Caleb starts to push himself upright, stretching, and Frumpin jumps down from his shoulders to investigate the shrubs. “Besides, I’ve been meaning to learn a spell to give us a little advantage on that. Come on, breakfast. And then we’d better get going, or else we won’t reach the next town before nightfall, and we’ll be down to eating rats.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that rats are an excellent source of protein!”

And the two of them don’t speak of it again. But the next time they’re on the road, Caleb casts his alarm spell, then curls himself around her and mutters next to her knee to wake him if the bandits come. Nott has no complaints. Caleb is bony (too thin, she’ll have to do something about that), but he’s warm in the cold Empire nights, and she has noticed a dramatic decrease in his nightmares. And just maybe feeling his heart thump steady against her cheek where it’s resting on his stomach fills the cold empty space in her heart with something bright and soft instead.

She always waits until he’s fully asleep to comb her fingers through his hair. Letting on that she’s getting attached would be a mistake, right? Trust is a weakness that could be exploited, even if she doesn’t think that Caleb ever would. 

Weeks pass by in an endless string of towns. Soon they stop bothering to order two beds at the inns. What’s the point of the extra expense if they both sleep better together anyway?

So by the time they roll into Trostenwald, there’s only one way that things can go, and that’s downhill.


	2. Three

Caleb fervently hopes that he never sees the entrance to a mine again as long as he lives. And he’s half wishing that the insane assholes who dragged them into this mess would vanish as well.

Nott doesn’t trust these people, that much is obvious to Caleb. He can’t blame her- he doesn’t either. He doesn’t trust people on principle, and on top of that, they’re too loud, too brash not to be hiding things under all that noise and chaos. Mollymauk especially; Caleb has never met anyone so loud trying to cover up such a gaping silence underneath. But the rest of them are similar. Beau sneers with hard eyes whenever anyone gets too close. Fjord’s veneer of polished civility and pleasant persuasive words hide something cold and dangerous. Jester laughs too frequently for all of it to be genuine. All of them are false and secretive and it sets Caleb’s teeth on edge, hypocrite though that might make him.

They do make a good distraction, though. Up until this point he had felt fairly confident that he and Nott could shake them as soon as things started turning south and be on their merry way.

In the wake of the disaster that was the mines, however, he starts feeling not so sure. 

Gnoles first, and then that manticore,  _ gods _ . He can still hear its roars echoing in his ears as he lit the priest on fire. As he incinerated the flesh, hair and skin burning away, and for half a second the bare skull had stared back at him before the figure had keeled over, the stench of roasted meat and burnt hair filling the air-

He shakes his head, coming back to the present. 

The flickering light around him is from bonfires rather than torches, the darkness that of nighttime rather than the oppressive gloom of the caves. He clenches his teeth against the rising nausea and memories. He’d been overcome back in the mines. He can’t afford to let it happen again. People will notice.

The party that’s been thrown for them in the town square is an emotional affair. The locals all seem to be either crying, dancing, or staring off exhaustedly into space. Most people’s smiles have a hysterical edge. Music starts up from somewhere behind the nearest bonfire. Nott was beside him as they came back into town, fussing over him, but she seems to have vanished somewhere while he was lost in his own thoughts. Probably looking for more alcohol. 

As he looks around, he sees Mollymauk spin past with one of the locals in a wild jig, smile wide enough to show his canines. As they twirl, his hair catches the light, until it looks like Molly is catching fire too, a spinning inferno around his head. Caleb’s hand clenches tight around his tankard and he looks deliberately away. 

He’s so tired. He just wants to sleep, but he knows, he  _ knows  _ what he will see when he does. His dreams are going to be unpleasant tonight. 

The rest of the evening blurs into colour and movement. Bryce ushers them all back to the inn. Caleb identifies their loot without fully taking in what they’ve managed to pull from the gnoles' bodies, mechanically downs several tankards of ale as the rest of their little group talk around him, the sounds of party outside slowly fading. 

Eventually Nott appears next to him and shoos him towards the stairs.

“You go on, you probably want to summon Frumpkin back, right?” she stares up at him, huge yellow eyes full of concern. “I got us a room!”

Always looking out for him. He allows himself to rest his hand against the top of her head for a moment. “ _ Ya, _ thank you Nott. That was very… very thoughtful of you.”   
  
He leaves the rest of the group to their drinking, ignoring the eyes that he can feel following him as he crosses the bar, and staggers up the rickety staircase and into the room. He must be drunker than he realised he was- he has to brace one hand against the wall to maintain his balance as he kneels. But he’s not so drunk that he can’t draw the intricate summoning circle in chalk on the floorboards. 

He lights the incense and utters the phrases under his breath. And with a little  _ pop  _ of misplaced air, Frumpkin’s furry form appears in front of him.

“Hello there,  _ katze, _ ” he murmurs as Frumpkin steps forward to rub against him, pressing a furry cheek into his palm and arching up into his hands. Always so pleased to see him. “I'm sorry you got killed. We’ll have to be more careful with you from now on, yes? No more running into the fight for you. No, none of that. Oh, what a handsome boy, yes you are. Only espionage for you from now on.”

Frumpkin kneads his legs several times as he is petted, eyes slitted in pleasure, then curls up in his lap and starts to purr, a comforting, vibrating weight. Caleb can’t help but start to relax. 

And it’s only really then that he realises how tightly wound he’s been. All evening he's been too distant to even realise. But now his shoulders droop. He aches all over, his arms, his back, even his jaw with how he’s been clenching his teeth. His brain feels bruised. And suddenly, the exhaustion is overwhelming.

With awkward motions, he gathers Frumpkin into his arms and stands, lowering himself into bed with a long sigh.  _ Gods,  _ he thinks again,  _ what a day. _ They nearly died, and if he lets himself think on it too much he knows he’s going to panic all over again. It’s cold in the room but for once he’s glad there’s no fire set in the grate. He doesn’t think he could handle flames right now. 

Hopefully Nott will be up soon, if she doesn’t get too deep in her cups. He can hardly sleep now without her raspy breathing next to his ear. Frumpkin curls up around his neck, purring, and Caleb buries his face in the soft fur and waits. Already he can feel the threads of anxiety winding through his mind. His gut twists. His fingers clench the sheets tighter.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to wait too long.

The latch clicks. He listens in a restless doze as the door creaks open, then closed again, and soft footsteps tap across the room towards the bed.

But that’s when things go wrong, because the body that plonks itself down onto the straw mattress behind him makes it sag alarmingly with weight. Too heavy. Too large. The _ thunk-thunk  _ of boots being thrown to the floor is far too loud for goblin-sized shoes. 

Caleb stiffens. His mind snaps back into focus. 

That’s not Nott. He’d forgotten to set the silver thread! How could he have been so  _ stupid? _ This could be anyone, they’ve broken into his room-

But half a second later his alarm dissolves into confusion as a heavy, inhumanly warm weight wraps itself around his back. There's a flash of purple and an arm slings itself over his waist, carrying a waft of perfume and road dirt and blood and the sour notes of the beer they’d been drinking in the bar.

“... Mollymauk?...”

“Shhh,” A horn taps the back of his head as Mollymauk shuffles closer. “‘m sleeping.”

Caleb finds himself frozen, but now, instead of fear, he’s pinned in place by awkwardness. “But… what…?”

There’s a moment of shuffling as the ratty blankets are rearranged. Mollymauk tucks them around them both and hums thoughtfully, settling back down. Caleb is hyper aware of the arm still wrapped around him, keeping him from escaping. 

“Call me paranoid, but leaving you all alone in a room after what happened in the mines didn’t seem like a particularly good idea to me.” Mollymauk’s voice comes from next to his ear, uncharacteristically soft. “You looked like shit back there, so here I am. Friends look out for one another. Now get some rest, I think tomorrow’s gonna be an interesting day.”

Friends?

They haven’t even known each other for a week. Caleb’s nowhere near ready to talk about what had happened to him in the mines, he’s not even ready to discuss the whole truth with Nott yet and he’s known her for six months. But Mollymauk isn’t pushing him for that. He’s just… there. 

Friends. 

Caleb’s first instinct is to think that maybe this is some kind of elaborate prank. That any time now people are going to burst in and start laughing. Should he try and pull away? But there’s no sounds of giggling, no footsteps outside his door. And judging by the way his breathing is already started to deepen, Molly doesn’t seem to have any intentions of letting go any time soon, even if Caleb’s body is still as stiff and tense as a board.

_ Friends.  _

Caleb can’t let that word go. He hasn’t told these people anything. They know none of his terrible secrets. They have no leverage over him. Logically, there should be no basis for trust there. How can Mollymauk just throw declarations like that around so easily? As though they hadn’t all met in Trostenwald just days before! As though the atmosphere doesn’t sag with the metaphorical weight of their collective baggage during every conversation! As though he, Caleb, is worthy of befriending-

There’s another soft  _ click  _ as the latch on the bedroom door opens again. His eyes snap open. Nott is silhouetted in the doorway, swaying, staring at the mess of limbs on the bed with confusion. Caleb gives her a helpless look from where the tiefling’s lithe form is pinning him to the mattress. 

Slowly, she closes the door. Molly doesn’t stir as she locks it and scrambles up to Caleb’s other side. She glances from him to Molly and back again, eyebrows raised into a universal silent question of  _ ‘what the fuck is going on?’  _

Caleb returns an expression that he hopes screams, _ ‘how the hell am I supposed to know?’ _

Nott glances at Mollymauk’s sleeping form again, narrows her eyes, then seems to make up her mind. “If he kicks either one of us in the night, I’ll murder him for you,” she hisses as she tucks a bony elbow against his stomach. Frumpkin rumbles again as he adjusts to another person and licks at her hair a few times before curling up again. 

Normally Caleb would try and stay awake as long as possible to try and stave off the fire dreams he knows are coming. But even as his brain spins, he can feel the warmth and steady breathing at his back pulling him under. He’s so tired.

He’s not ready to be friends with these people yet. But maybe one day. 

Just maybe.

  
  


...

  
  


The dreams of fire never come.


End file.
